Subject: Re: blame follows renames, but log doesn't

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:19:16 -0400

On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 01:10:28PM +1200, Martin Langhoff wrote:
> 
> when I show git to newbies or demo it to people using other SCMs, and
> we get to the rename part of the conversation, I discuss and show how
> GIT's approach is significantly better than explicit recording of
> renames.
> 
> One great example is git-blame -- actually more spectacular with the
> recent git gui blame improvements. But git-log still doesn't do it.

Actually, the bigger missing gap is merges.  Suppose in the
development branch, you rename a whole bunch of files.  (For example,
foo_super.c got moved to foo/super.c, foo_inode.c got moved to
foo/inode.c, etc.)

Now suppose there are fixes made in the stable branch, in the original
foo_super.c and foo_inode.c files.  Ideally you would want to be able
to pull those changes into the development branch, where the files
have new names, and have the changes be applied to foo/super.c and
foo/inode.c in the development branch.

I was recently talking to someone who is still using BitKeeper, and he
cited this scenario as one of the reasons why his project is still
using BK; he'd like to move to git, but this is a critical piece of
functionality for him. 

						- Ted